But does high-skilled emigration really pose such a threat? The last five years has seen a surge in empirical research on the subject, which John Gibson and I use to answer eight key questions about brain drain in a paper forthcoming in the Journal of Economic Perspectives and now out in the World Bank working paper series.

The 8 key questions addressed are: 1) What is brain drain? 2) Why should economists care about it? 3) Is brain drain increasing? 4) Is there a positive relationship between skilled and unskilled migration? 5) What makes brain drain more likely? 6) Does brain gain exist? 7) Do high-skilled workers remit, invest, and share knowledge back home? and 8) What do we know about the fiscal and production externalities of brain drain?